For an artist, it is not one's conscience, but one's talent, making cowards of us all. Cardew's courage to dismiss an earlier abstract artistry of his own is indeed heroic. His career bears a comparison to D. H. Lawrence. Both set aside an evocative use of the language of their medium for a kind of "message" of sorts. Cage in his own way did likewise. In this regard Cornelius Cardew is not in bad company. However, it is in a work such as The Great Learning which I feel Cardew found a unique equanimity of means between a musical poetry and his political beliefs - something akin to what Christian Wolff is doing with similar concerns. As perhaps the last indigenous esoteric composers surviving on this planet, I deeply mourn Cardew's death. He wrote beautifully about my own music and played it exquisitely. Perhaps we are not that far apart than one might think. There will always be ... Cornelius Cardew.
Morton Feldman, March 18, 1982